While we were in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, we stayed at a very lovely B & B, La Maison de Françoise. It is operated by husband and wife, Bruno and Françoise. It is rare that I do a post exclusively on a hotel room, but this was a special place.

We really enjoyed the grounds of their estate. Everything was thoughtfully done, from the gardens to the sitting rooms.

It was lovely chatting with the couple.

Lovely grounds of La Maison de Francoise

The pool…notice how all in Provence must be above ground due to the craggy rock soil?

Conversation areas

Our little room was on the top floor of this farmhouse

Our doorway

Rapunzel…let your hair down. Just kidding, he was upstairs working and I was beckoning him.

Breakfast was

Breakfast was coffee, fresh squeezed juice, and a basket of Provençal pastries and breads with confiture.

I mentioned how much we liked D943 for the amazing lavender from Gordes to Sault. I am happy to report the views didn’t stop after Sault. We continued on our way home, weaving on small roads through some really cool gorges.

Driving home from Sault to Geneva

Cool rock formations

Lovely views

After a few miles, I noticed there was a river running next to the road. Neat.

A glimpse of the water down below’

I felt bad for Gabe as he was driving and couldn’t see how pretty it was. When we saw this view below, I exclaimed, “if you can stop, do it!”

Waterfall at the gorge

So we parked our car and took a better look. Gabe commented, “It’s an adult water park!”

After our better look, we hiked back up, changed into our suits and headed down to give it a whirl.

Walking through the gorge

Playing in the rapids. The limestone below was smooth, like the bottom of a pool.

Taking a jump

Yup. It’s cold!

My turn

Another go for Gabe

We only jumped off the second platform. Even I could stand right there. We don’t know how the heck these guys weren’t killing themselves:

This goes to show you, the best things in life are free. And we are grateful for that. We’ll never forget the day we accidentally found the free all-natural “water park”.

If you want to check it out, it is called Les Gorges De la Méouge. Below is a map of where we found it:

As I mentioned, this trip was all about lavender. However, I made a mistake when booking our hotel as I really didn’t know where the lavender was. It ended up being okay for us since we enjoyed our time St-Rémy but if we were super lavender-serious, we would have been more disappointed to be 2 hours away from it! Thus, I wanted to show you a few resources and maps so that when you are planning your lavender adventure, you will do better than me.

The best place for spotting purple fields we saw on the entire trip was the D943 road from Gordes to Sault, above the green national park area.

The top part of this drive near Sault was the best….

There was no one around, and lots of beautiful fields. Here are a few:

Awesome field with Mt Ventoux in the background

Gorgeous fields

Having fun traipsing through the lavender

More fields on D943

Pretty landscape from our table on the terrace at Le Promenade in Sault. It looks calm but its windy from Le Mistral.

View from the village of Sault in mid July

Leaving Sault, we continued to see lavender on D943

More wild looking fields….

Hills near Sault

Sigh…..do we have to go back to Geneva?

We also really enjoyed the Abbaye de Senanque because of the beauty of the abbey. I’d like to say it was peaceful but a tour bus arrived just before us so it took some of the tranquility away. Check out my post from yesterday to see the photos. The Abbaye was hard to find in our GPS. When you approach Gordes, there are signs, but wanted to provide a map, just in case:

How to get to Abbaye de Senanque

We also enjoyed Valdition, but it was just one field and very far away from the others. However, if you are near St. Rémy or Arles, this would be a good choice. Valdition is the name of region as well as the major estate winery there. The field is at the Estate winery so look for that and follow the signs for parking to see the field.

We heard that Valensole is a super place. That was our Plan B vs. Sault & Abbaye de Senanque. We ultimately went the way we did based on the topography and wanting to see it both up close and the fields from a distance. If you’ve been to Valensole to see the lavendar, I’d love to hear how that is!

When we were driving back to Geneva, I glanced down at our tour books and noticed that we hit the two covers!! It wasn’t intentional, but feel relieved that maybe we did see the best spots!

If you haven’t gotten enough lavender yet, here are a few driving video outtakes as well: